


The Camera's On Us

by weekend_conspiracy_theorist



Category: Fantastic Four (Comicverse), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Past Mary Jane Watson/Peter Parker, Top Chef AU, back ground Mary Jane Watson/Gwen Stacy, background Doreen Green/Nancy Whitehead, because I'm incapable of not using the f-bomb, even more background Felicia Hardy/Cindy Moon, rated for language, there are a lot of characters but I think those are most of the major ones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-24
Updated: 2016-11-24
Packaged: 2018-09-01 23:42:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8642782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weekend_conspiracy_theorist/pseuds/weekend_conspiracy_theorist
Summary: Top Chef Season Twenty comes to a close with a reunion episode you won't want to miss! Tune in for the answers to questions we've all been wondering--Why does Kate Bishop wear so many sunglasses? Are Doreen and Nancy really dating? Did Johnny dump that bag of flour on Peter on purpose? And, of course, just who is the mysterious MJ?(A Top Chef AU told through the reunion episode and a series of flashbacks to earlier events--including a teary goodbye kiss, the aforementioned flour incident, and when Johnny met Mary Jane... or, well, not quite.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Thanksgiving! I know nothing about cooking and a minimal amount about how things work behind the scenes on Top Chef, so suspend your disbelief for anything that seems weird and strap in for a fun ride :D
> 
> The absolutely incredible artwork courtesy of tumblr's that-one-mod <3

"Here we are, back to answer your questions after closing out another spectacular season of _Top Chef_. Allow me to introduce our judges: Gail Simmons of _Food and Wine Magazine,_ master chef Tom Colicchio, our host Padma Lakshmi, and we'll be joined later by—"

 

"The devil himself," Peter mutters, and Johnny snickers from where he's slouched low in his seat. His hand finds Peter's knee and squeezes, as if there isn't at least one camera trained directly and unabashedly at the two of them. Peter squeezes his eyes shut- counting to ten (and then thinking about Aunt May's disappointed face when that doesn't work)- but he doesn't move Johnny's away from his knee.

 

Andy Cohen continues, unaware of how close Peter is to committing an act of domestic violence on national TV. "—food critic J. Jonah Jameson. It's great to see all of you—"

 

"Much better seeing them now than when they were tearing into us at Judges' Table," Kate Bishop cuts in. Peter's pretty sure that he'd have gotten dirty looks if he'd said something like that, but Kate pushes her sunglasses up onto the top of her head, flashing a lazy grin at the nearest camera, and everyone laughs.

 

What must it be like to be America's favorite up-and-coming chef and simultaneously capable of pulling off motorcycle gloves as a part of your casual wardrobe? Peter wishes he knew.

 

"And I know I'm not alone in saying that it's great seeing all of the chefs again," Andy finishes, tossing a fond glance at the camera. "We've had a bigger and more involved fanbase this year than ever before, and the Fan Favorite Voting- results to be disclosed later in the program- was pretty much anybody's game until the last twenty minutes."

 

"Really?" Gail blurts, and laughs when every head in the room snaps around to face her. "Come on, guys, you can't tell me you didn't expect it to be Johnny in a landslide. He's a ham for the cameras."

 

Johnny just winks again, doing absolutely nothing to disprove the point, and Peter elbows him and rolls his eyes. "Maybe the viewership has actual taste, Gail," he suggests, in a distressingly fond tone of voice.

 

(Damn you, Johnny Storm, and your stupidly charming face.)

 

After the laughter dies away, Tom shrugs, one arm thrown casually over the back of his chair, and tells Gail, "I always thought it was going to be Doreen, actually."

 

"I agree!" Padma cuts in, with a sharp burst of laughter. She motions to Doreen with one hand, saying, "You have a very unique charisma. I'm not sure we've ever had a chef on our show with so much confidence and yet so little ego; it's charming."

 

Doreen beams at Padma, round cheeks dimpling with the force of her smile. "That's so nice of you to say, Padma! I find you pretty charming, too."

 

"Right there," Tom laughs, pointing sharply at Doreen to emphasize his words. "That's what _I_ was talking about. You're just so _nice._ "

 

"I know, right?" Nancy Whitehead says, laughing. "It makes it really hard to be bitter that she won."

 

"As if you'd be bitter anyway," Cindy Moon stage-whispers, not loud enough for Andy or the judges to hear, but Peter snorts so hard that Nancy turns in her seat just to glare at him.

 

"Speaking of winning," Andy says, with the air of a man who's attempting to get things back on track, "how's that feel, Doreen?"

 

"It's been pretty rad to be Top Chef, Andy, I gotta say. The publicity's helped my restaurant get off the ground, and when I first brought Nancy up to Canada to meet my mom, I had the perfect topic of conversation to distract them from going through my baby pictures together." She throws an arm casually over the back of Nancy's chair, and the camera that's been trained on Pete and Johnny suddenly switches focus.

 

Nancy pats Doreen's knee, ignoring the camera like a trooper. "It's cute how you think she didn't just email them to me later."

 

Andy's eyebrows have climbed up towards his hairline; Felicia Hardy leans over to whisper in Peter's ear, "Did he even watch the season? They may not have been as obvious as, say, _you two_ , but I can't believe he didn't know they were an item."

 

Peter turns his head the slightest bit to the side, muttering back, "Bite me."

 

"Not if your blood was radioactive and would give me superpowers." Felicia straightens in her chair, snickering, and Peter, determinedly forcing his lips down into a frown instead of a grin, probably would have flipped her off if they'd been in any other setting.

 

Well, maybe not a funeral.

 

Certainly not _his own_ funeral.

 

Probably not Fel's either, at the risk of offending any grieving family mem—

 

Johnny elbows him, and Peter quickly blinks his way back to attention.

 

"— actually dating?" Andy Cohen finishes a question Peter'd missed the start of. He laughs and makes a show of tossing one of his index cards back over his shoulder. "Well, that's _one_ fan question I don't have to be the mouthpiece for."

 

Doreen laughs, too. "Well, frig, I mean, we're living together now. I'd say that that's a bit further along than just dating."

 

"I mean, you could argue that we're just really, really close friends who sleep in the same bed so we don't have to pay for two mattresses," Nancy snarks. She glances over at Peter and Johnny, the glint in her eye just like the one that MJ had gotten the first time he saw her after getting kicked off the show. "We even had our own teary goodbye kiss; we just weren't careless enough to get caught on camera."

 

There's a beat of silence, and the camera swivels away from Doreen and Nancy once more.

 

"In my defense," Peter begins, and then he realizes he has no idea how to finish that statement.

 

***

 

Johnny's on his feet the instant they're walking through the door; Peter's barely got his hands in the air, barely pasted on his watery smile and uttered a joking, "That's all, folks," before he's being tugged tight against an unfairly muscled chest. He buries his face in Johnny's shoulder, heedless of the way his glasses twist uncomfortably, and clutches his fingers into the fabric of Johnny's chef coat. Someone- probably Doreen, in all her frighteningly sympathetic glory- sets a hand on his back for a brief second.

 

"Sucks, bro," Kate says. Considering how aloof she pretends to be on camera, it's a shining endorsement. (It doesn't make him feel any better.)

 

"Fucking unfair," Johnny whispers, voice utterly and ridiculously _devastated_. His arms tighten for half a second; Peter swallows hard. "Right before the fucking finale, Pete, what am I gonna do without your stupid face taunting me onwards and upwards?"

 

"You're gonna finally get some peace and quiet?" Peter suggests. He tugs off his glasses so he can scrub hard at his face, drawing away from Johnny, and makes another attempt at a smile. He squeezes at Johnny's upper arms and tears his gaze away from the broken, slightly blurry "I never want peace and quiet if it means being away from you" expression staring down at him.

 

(He's kind of barely holding it together right now, Storm, don't make him fuck it up.)

 

Peter shoves his glasses back on, takes a few steps away from Johnny, and—misses him already. Which is ridiculous and pointless, because the great lump is _standing right there_. "Bring it in, ladies," he says, instead of something embarrassing and/or incriminating, and throws his arms wide. "Kick his ass for me, since I have failed to do it myself."

 

"They don't call me 'unbeatable' for nothin', Parker," Doreen tells him, with a grin that's trying just a little too hard. (Man, he always thought the contestants were nuts, being teary eyed and upset when people went home. Better them than you, right? But the friendships you build out of a gauntlet like this—)

 

"Please, Green; you aren't taking me down without a fight," Kate says. Her omnipresent sunglasses are settled firmly on her nose when they'd been dangling off of her chef coat a second ago.

 

There's a beat of silence, and then Doreen, Kate, and Nancy all storm forward to hug him in unplanned unison, sending him staggering back a step. He huffs out a watery laugh and wraps his arms around them as best he can before meeting Johnny's gaze over their heads. Johnny's jaw is so tight, his eyes are so expressive, that Peter can only manage eye contact for a split second before dropping his head back, breathing out sharply in an attempt to bite back some kind of eleventh-hour confession—

 

He's just leaving the show, Jesus, he's not _dying_. He and Johnny are gonna see each other again.

 

Peter's not really supposed to dawdle over his goodbyes- it's time to _pack up his knives and go_ \- so he disentangles himself, forcing a grin and nodding through Nancy's promise to add him to the list of people she's gonna dedicate her win to (he ranks just below her cat and just above her favorite CIA instructor) and Kate's unsubtle attempt at regaining her unaffected attitude (a fistbump).

 

In the background, AKA "absolutely not where at least half of Peter's attention is focused despite all pretenses", Doreen sidles away from them and punches Johnny on the arm hard enough to make him wince. She whispers something that gets him to laugh, then he drags a hand down his face and straightens his shoulders, which is probably Peter's cue to go. Make the escape before either of them loses their delicate composure all over again.

 

Yet, he can't resist one last jab.

 

"Don't think you're rid of me yet, Storm," he warns, walking backwards towards the door out of the stew room. "This is just one battle; my restaurant's gonna be right down the street from yours, and—"

 

"I want a real goodbye, you asshole, not a raincheck for a duel," Johnny says, rolling his eyes, and Pete feels all of his hard-won momentum disperse into thin air. It's kind of wildly unfair how put together Johnny looks, when he'd been devastated and on the edge of tears not a minute ago.

 

(Does he have styling gel hidden somewhere in his chef coat? That would explain a lot.)

 

"It's less of a raincheck for a duel and more of a threat of impending guerilla warfare," Peter offers weakly, because Johnny has this weird sort of determined look in his eye as he's stepping forward, reaching out to draw him in. (Not-at-all-related to the hysteria beginning to bubble up through his chest, Peter notes that the camera guy has stopped making vague "move-it-along" gestures with his free hand.)

 

A warm, knife-callused hand closes around his forearm, and he really should not be held accountable for his next actions when Johnny Storm is looking at him like _that_.

 

***

 

"In your defense…?" Cindy taunts, waving a hand for him to continue. All of his friends have too much fun watching him flounder; she leans forward and peers down towards him, black hair slipping out from behind her ear in a smooth sheet, and he hasn't seen her smirk like that since that time the chefs had a massive _Mario Kart_ tournament while waiting for the next challenge.

 

(She kicked all of their asses. _Big time_.)

 

Johnny, unhelpfully, just snickers. Peter would totally kick his ass for it at some later date, except that Johnny is sort of unfairly muscular and Peter has asthma.

 

"I was under a lot of stress?" he tries. Cindy just raises an eyebrow at him, and out of the corner of his eye he can see Padma smothering a grin behind her hand. (And she'd always been his favorite judge.) He huffs, spreading his hands in an aborted version of the exasperatedly-throwing-them-in-the-air gesture he'd make if he wouldn't elbow Johnny and/or Felicia in the face in the process. "Look, I'd be more embarrassed if it hadn't worked out so well for me!"

 

"Aw," Johnny coos. He grabs one of Peter's hands in both of his and presses it to his cheek, fluttering his eyelashes sarcastically. "You really do care!"

 

Peter extracts his hand and pats Johnny's shoulder. "Don't be flattered; I was referring to the fact that I now have access to Reed and Sue's kitchen."

 

Johnny cackles, swooping in to press a sloppy kiss against Peter's cheek—someone wolf-whistles, and it's definitely either Nancy or Cindy, except that it could easily be Foggy or Danny or Kate or really anyone but Octavius or Eddie Brock; he wouldn't even put it past Kraven.

 

"Hey, Andy, throw Pete a bone and ask someone else a question, would you?" Johnny asks, just a hint of sincere concern underlying his breezy, joking tone. "He's hit the 'constant deflection' section of the night."

 

"You say that like I didn't drop anchor in the 'constant deflection' section of my _life_ two decades ago," Peter mutters, dropping his arm over the back of Johnny's chair. (Johnny shamelessly cuddles into his side despite the armrest that's in his way.)

 

Everyone else, though, laughs (well, Octavius doesn't, and the noise that Kraven makes could actually have been a cough or a weird Russian curse word), and Andy Cohen consults his note cards with an unhealthy zeal.

 

"Here's one for Kate—everyone and their grandmother seems to have an opinion about the restaurant you and your friends announced last month. Care to comment on the accusations that you're all too young and inexperienced to run it effectively?"

 

"It's all bullshit," she says, dismissive. "Our inability to get a liquor license is the only thing holding us back, really, and the last of us turns twenty-one in less than a year. We're all talented, we've been working together for long enough to have developed a menu that complements our individual styles, and between Eli and I we have the business end covered."

 

"Confident," Tom laughs, crossing his arms and raising an eyebrow. "Maybe a little too confident; opening a restaurant is no easy business."

 

Kate snorts. "I made it through Restaurant Wars, believe me, I know." She waves a hand. "Anyway, we're being realistic; we know it's going to be rough, but that's why we decided to do it together." She smirks and turns to look straight at the nearest camera, leaning forward and blowing it a kiss. "This way we've got Tommy as a scapegoat when it all goes down the gutter."

 

She adjusts her sunglasses as she sits back, still smirking, and Peter hides his grin in Johnny's hair—he's met Wanda Maximoff before, and she's as terrifying as she is incredible; he doesn't want to be seen laughing at her kid on national television.

 

"Okay, wait, that little tick reminded me, I've been dying to ask this," Tom says, making a vague gesture at the top of his head, as the slightly uneasy tittering throughout the room fades away, "are the glasses an old habit, an eccentricity, a gimicky attempt to build an image…?"

 

Johnny blurts out, "That's really rude of you to ask, Tom!" as he straightens abruptly, leaving a cold spot against Peter's side, and folds his arms over his chest. A muscle in his jaw twitches—it makes him look angry to those who are less familiar with his every micro-expression, but Peter _knows_ that muscle twitch.

 

He slouches as far away from Johnny as he can get, one hand splaying over the lower half of his own face, and hisses at Felicia, "Is it too late to pretend I don't know him?"

 

She laughs at him and goes back to making eyes across the room at Cindy.

 

Meanwhile, Kate quickly schools her face back to somber after a flicker of confusion and then nods, sagely; Tom looks back and forth between her and Johnny with a look of utter befuddlement. "Really, I expected better of you, Mr. Colicchio," she says, disappointment dripping from her tone. She looks beseechingly over at Doreen, who reaches over to clasp her shoulder and nod solemnly.

 

"I… what?" Tom turns to Padma and Gail, but they're just as thrown off as he is.

 

Kate sighs. Taps her fingers against her thigh and clarifies—"I'm extremely photosensitive." She flicks her hair back over her shoulder and lowers her glasses back to her nose. "It's a symptom of a relatively rare genetic disease, and though I confided it in Johnny during that last week in the house, in general I don't really like to discuss it."

 

"There are other side-effects," Johnny adds, somber, and Peter further covers his face with his hands, shoving his fingers up under the lenses of his glasses—a guaranteed recipe for smudging, but it's not like they're ever clean anyway. Gail makes a sudden noise of understanding, clapping a hand over her mouth, and Tom is looking increasingly suspicious. (Peter spreads a couple fingers and cracks an eye to witness the trainwreck happen.) Johnny continues to hold his poker face, even as he shares, "She's allergic to garlic, and her photosensitivity also manifests in extreme blistering when she's exposed to sunlight. And—well, I mean, did you think she under-cooked all of her red meats as a stylistic choice?"

 

Kate throws herself half-across Doreen to smack Johnny on the thigh; he yelps. "Vampire, Johnny?!?" she growls, and the room explodes with laughter. "You threw away a golden opportunity to mess with Tom for the sake of a vampire joke?!?"

 

"You make a great Edward," Johnny tells her, and she uses one hand to shield the other from the cameras as she flips him off.

 

Tom shakes his head, giving a self-deprecating huff. "You guys had me going there for a minute."

 

Kate returns to her seat, pushing her sunglasses back up into her hair and admitting, "You were right, Tom, the glasses are a gimmick; Jackass over here called me on it after the first Judges' Table."

 

"I just thought you wore them because you're cool," Doreen pipes in, as Johnny leans over to Peter and pries his hands off of his face—he drops a kiss to Peter's wrist, smirking at the eye roll it gets him, and mouths something like "Couldn't help myself."

 

"Could've," Peter points out, though he twists his hand in Johnny's grip to be able to link their fingers; Johnny beams at him.

 

Then Doreen tacks on, "You're probably the coolest person here, except for maybe Felicia," and his attention snaps away from Peter.

 

"Sacrilege!" He insists, gesturing angrily to himself (with the hand that Peter doesn't stubbornly cling to), at the same time as Nancy smacks Doreen on the shoulder and exclaims, "You kidding me, Green?"

 

Half a beat passes, and then they go from glaring at Doreen to staring at each other disbelievingly.

 

("You write cat-insert fanfiction and knit!" Johnny hisses at Nancy. She snarls back, "You're a _gigantic nerd_. Also, you have no fashion sense," and Peter has to clap a hand over Johnny's mouth to keep him from squawking indignantly.)

 

Kate ignores the both of them, though she does flash Doreen a smile. "Thanks. But no, you know, I turned twenty-two _during the show_ , and everyone else had at least five to ten years on me; the shades gave me an edge. Mostly it was just a mental one, but I do suspect that the immaturity they projected was part of why certain chefs underestimated me so badly."

 

"Certain chefs?" Andy prompts.

 

Kate shrugs. "I was challenged in _both_ Sudden Death Quickfires this season, but I wasn't in the bottom three on either of them. I can't speak for Foggy's or Octavius's thought processes, but it doesn't seem like coincidence, does it?"

 

"I will regret that decision 'til the end of my days," Foggy says, mournfully. "Though, while I'm not denying that I underestimated you, at that point you hadn't been in the top for a single Quickfire and had been in the bottom on at least one…" he shrugs, wincing. "I gambled on you having a hard time cooking within time constraints, not so much on you being an inexperienced chef."

 

"Quickfires took a bit of a learning curve," Kate admits, stretching back, and briefly clasps hands with Foggy in a gesture of "no hard feelings". She then glances at Otto Octavius, one of her perfectly manicured eyebrows rising challengingly. "And you?"

 

"I simply believed I could defeat any one of the remaining chefs and chose one at random," he tells her, sneering, "and in your case I proved to be right."

 

Kate smiles sweetly. "You still went home at the end of the episode, Doc; I wouldn't be too smug."

 

***

 

The tension in the house is palpable; Kate's banging every cabinet in the kitchen as she cooks lunch, muttering things under her breath about cocky white boys and judges who wouldn't know real Korean food if it bit them in the ass. She'd stormed up to the girls' room after they'd just gotten back, called her friend America, screamed into the phone for fifteen seconds, hung up, and then repeated the process with her mentor- and cheerfully self-professed human disaster- Clint Barton as she came back down the stairs.

 

(The way she'd jerked the phone away from her ear suggested that Clint had probably started screaming back. At least it'd made her crack a brief smile.)

 

"Should we try and go talk to her…?" Johnny asks, awkwardly, glancing over his shoulder at Kate and then back to the TV that he, Peter, Nancy, and Doreen are pretending to be watching. His arm, stretched along the couch behind Peter's shoulders, is tense and anxious, and Pete wouldn't be surprised if Johnny was sinking a lot of focus into not drumming his fingers.

 

"I think she just needs to get it out of her system," Doreen answers lowly. She chews on her bottom lip, slightly-oversized teeth poking out, and Nancy bumps shoulders with her, offering a smile and a hushed, "She's fine, Doreen, just pissed off about losing because her food 'wasn't authentic.'"

 

Octavius wanders into the room, and the entire couch turns, slowly, to watch him as he passes by. He doesn't say a word to any of them, nose buried in a book as he reaches into the fridge—Kate's standing stock still, her knuckles visibly white around the handle of her knife even from the other side of the room. When Octavius wanders away again, water bottle in hand, Peter can see a hint of a smug smile on the man's face.

 

He's not too adult to admit to a vivid fantasy of punching it off.

 

(It's so vivid a fantasy, in fact, that he's able to acknowledge the likelihood that he would injure himself more than Octavius and rubs thoughtlessly at the knuckles of his right hand.)

 

Kate drops her head back, staring at the ceiling for a long moment, and then breathes out heavily through her nose. "One of you lazy assholes come help me out here," she finally orders, returning to chopping vegetables, and Doreen laughs with relief.

 

"That's our girl!" Peter cheers, fist-pumping, and Kate turns around and raises her glasses just so she can roll her eyes at him.

 

"If one of you goes home this week instead of him, you're collectively banned from my restaurant," she threatens, waving a knife from Johnny on the far end of the couch to Doreen, who's bounding out of her seat to go help cook.

 

"You don't have a restaurant," Peter points out, and cackles as she shouts "Fuck off!" back at him. There's no bite; she's already shaking off her ignominious defeat. Peter slouches sideways into Johnny with a heavy sigh of relief- it's not taking advantage of proximity when Johnny's touchy-feely with everyone, right?- and kicks his feet up onto the coffee table. The scent of Johnny's fabric softener washes over him, and he lets his eyes close for a half a second before he forces them open once more.

 

(Johnny smells nice, all the time; fifteen hours in the kitchen and Peter'll smell like sweat and olive oil and whatever he's managed to spill on himself that night, but Johnny'll still smell like citrus-y hair product and sharp, clean deodorant. Peter knows this for perfectly innocent reasons, he assures you; they'd hugged just after close at Restaurant Wars, when they still thought they had it in the bag.)

 

(Damn you, Sam Wilson, and your incredible apple pie recipe.)

 

"Gross, we eat on that," Nancy tells him, wrinkling her nose and prodding his socked feet with the toe of her converse. Peter shrugs unrepentantly, flexing his toes, and after a second's debate- glancing over her shoulder to eye the grilled cheeses Kate and Doreen are preparing- Nancy slouches low herself and follows suit.

 

"Gross, we eat on that," Johnny parrots at her, smirking—she throws a crumpled up napkin at him.

 

"Behave, children," Peter intones. Unfortunately, his authority is undermined by the fact that his socks don't match. (That, or Nancy and Johnny had absolutely zero intention of listening to him in the first place.)

 

"Gross, someone ate off of this," Johnny says, holding the napkin up between his thumb and forefinger and making an exaggeratedly disgusted face.

 

Nancy sticks her tongue out at him and wriggles further into the couch. "Gross, someone ate at your restaurant," she mocks.

 

Johnny gives a gasp of outrage. "Yeah, well, your face is gross!"

 

"You lose!"

 

"We weren't playing anything!"

 

"We were having a battle of something vaguely resembling wits, at the _very least_."

 

"That only counted as a battle of wits if your quiche last quickfire counted as food—hint: _it didn't_."

 

Nancy lunges over Peter in attempt to ruffle Johnny's perfectly coifed hair; he gasps and throws himself off of the couch to escape.

 

Peter squawks, flailing when his pillow abruptly disappears, and tumbles down after Johnny in a jumble of limbs. Nancy's laughing, flopping onto her stomach to bury her face in the couch cushions they'd just vacated, and Peter lies there for a second, blinking up at the ceiling and listening to the sounds of Kate and Doreen pointedly ignoring the lot of them.

 

Johnny wraps his arms around Peter, folding his hands and resting them on the slightly rucked up fabric of Peter's shirt as he grumbles under his breath. One of his thumbs brushes against bare skin. "You win this round, Whitehead," he complains, with a distinct lack of heat; meanwhile Peter has forgotten how to _breathe_.

 

(Think straight thoughts, Peter, your second bi awakening does _not_ need to be publically broadcast.)

 

He cautiously straightens his legs out from the awkward angles they'd landed in and lets himself relax—Johnny wriggles slightly, finding a more comfortable position, and the buckle of his belt digs into the small of Peter's back. Reaching back to move it would be weird, right? Right. Peter resigns himself to a bruise.

 

"Is collateral damage normally how you get boys horizontal, Storm?" his mouth asks, running ahead of him like always.

 

Johnny huffs, the motion providing sweet, sweet relief from the belt buckle situation for one split second before it's back and _even more painful_. "Don't be crude, Parker; there's a minor in the kitchen."

 

"I'm twenty-fucking-two, Johnny!" Kate shouts.

 

"Oh, well, in _that_ case, I normally get boys horizontal by—"

 

Nancy throws another napkin at him. (Or maybe the same one, rescued from between the couch cushions; Peter isn't sure.) "No one wants to hear about your seduction techniques," she orders. "Peter looks like he would love to be on the receiving end of them, but—"

 

"No, sorry," Peter sucks in a breath through his teeth, lifting up one hand to wag a finger in Nancy's face. (She has obligingly turned it towards him, so it's only fair to make use of the opportunity.) He sets his other hand over Johnny's and feels the back of his neck flush. He ignores the feeling in favor of getting _sweet, sweet revenge for the belt buckle digging into the small of his back_ : "See, Nancy, I only like to be seduced by people who can actually cook."

 

Johnny squawks. "Is that how it is, then?!?" he demands, snatching his hands out from under Peter's.

 

"Yeah, that's how it is," Peter taunts, twisting his arm slightly awkwardly to prod Johnny in the side. "You were the dead weight in Restaurant Wars, buddy. The judges just sent Kraven home because the viewers like your face too much."

 

Johnny coos. "You think I'm pretty."

 

"Yeah, pretty bad at cooking."

 

"I've won more challenges than you!"

 

"Jameson has turned the judges all against me!"

 

"Jameson's opinions mean squat to Padma and you know it!"

 

"Hearing that vitriol day in and day out still colors one's perceptions, and—"

 

Johnny claps a hand over his mouth. "Peter, Peter, listen to me—" Peter drags his tongue up Johnny's palm, but Johnny just laughs at him. "I have a niece and a nephew and also a Ben, but nice try. Peter, listen to me: I am a much better chef than you. It is a fact of life. The sooner you accept it, the sooner you—HOW THE HELL ARE YOUR ELBOWS SO BONY?"

 

Johnny's shocked enough that Peter is able to roll free- well, as free as he can get when the coffee table and couch are hemming them in- and push up to one elbow. He's being glared at, Johnny rubbing at his side and glancing distrustfully towards Peter's skinny arms, so in response he sticks his tongue out in a display of utter maturity. "You may have a niece and a nephew and also a Ben," he gloats, "but I have an MJ."

 

Johnny groans in the face of Peter's smug grin, rolling onto his side to shove at him lightly. "Are you ever gonna explain who the hell MJ is?"

 

Peter nudges Johnny's knee with his own, the cool metal leg of the coffee table pressing into his back and carpet fibers pressing painfully into his elbow, and his smile only widens. "I find that the mystery adds to my mystique."

 

Johnny huffs, petulant. "If your mystique relies on a bunch of stories about some other person, you're doing it wrong."

 

***

 

Kate and Octavius stare at each other for a long, tense moment, and then Andy Cohen clears his throat. "Kate, you mentioned Restaurant Wars, an episode I'd like to focus on with our next question from the viewers."

 

"Oh no," Peter whispers, as Andy Cohen's glittering white smile turns back towards him.

 

Johnny snickers. "Oh yes."

 

"You two had been at each other's throats for the entire first half of the season," Andy says, and he leans forward, his Cheshire grin somehow getting even wider as he props one elbow on his knee and points with his index cards. "Yet, when you drew the knife to be Executive Chef for one of the Restaurant Wars teams, Johnny was your first pick of the draft. Sam was planning to try and stick you with him to throw you off your game—"

 

"That's the cruelest thing I've ever heard, Sam," Peter comments mildly.

 

"Got only yourself to blame for losing if you don't take advantage of your opportunities," Sam tells him, fingers drumming on his thigh as he shrugs one shoulder. "Can't even describe the double-take I did when you called his name without a damn second of hesitation, though."

 

"No one was expecting that," Padma adds, laughing.

 

Andy Cohen nods, gesturing from her to Peter. "Exactly. That's why Maggie from Ohio wants to know exactly what was going through your mind in that moment, Peter."

 

"I tend to think in…" He wiggles a finger through the air in front of himself as if sketching a traverse that crosses over itself multiple times. "You don't want to know my exact thought process, trust me—I'm pretty sure I was already debating the merits of different tablecloth fabrics by the time we were picking teams."

 

He can feel Johnny's smirk without looking, and fumbles to try and stomp on his foot—Johnny just moves his foot out of the way and smirks harder. Peter clears his throat, ignoring how he can feel Felicia laughing at him from his other side, and continues, "This isn't what Maggie from Ohio wants me to say, I'm sure—"

 

"You _weren't_ hatching a desperate plan to try and corner me alone in the walk-in freezer?" Johnny asks innocently.

 

Peter raises his voice to drown him out. "—BUT I WAS THINKING 'everyone in this room can cook, that's been proven several times over, but Johnny Storm regularly works front of house for one of the best restaurants in Manhattan.'"

 

Johnny makes a little noise, a surprised kind of pride—he, Reed, Sue, and Ben are all too close to _Four_ to realize just how much respect they've earned even within the cutthroat world of New York cuisine. Peter reaches over to squeeze his knee, unable to help the smile that tugs at the corners of his lips.

 

"In other words," he finishes, "I was thinking, 'He's a jackass with a mysterious ability to keep his hair perfectly styled through four hours of standing over a hot stove, but that just means he's a well-groomed jackass who knows how to schmooze; AKA a fucking _steal_.'"

 

Johnny hums, leaning in towards Peter with a mocking tilt to his head and glint in his eye, and teases, "No, I'm pretty sure you just thought I was hot and couldn't resist the chance to order me around."

 

"Normally I would have a very sarcastic, extremely inappropriate response for that, but somewhere out there my aunt is watching this, and I don't want to scandalize her." Peter raises his hand, spreads his fingers wide across Johnny's face, and lovingly shoves him away. "In the meantime, try not to give Maggie from Ohio any ideas."

 

"Too late for that one, probably," Padma points out, and Gail smacks her shoulder with the back of one hand, laughing. "What, it's true!"

 

"Yeah, and in case Maggie from Ohio was wondering—"

 

"Johnny, I swear to god if you talk about our sex life on national television—"

 

"Shut up, Peter." Johnny clamps a hand over his mouth (cants his body away from the swing of his elbow) and restarts. "Maggie, if you were also wondering what my thoughts were when Petey here called out my name, they were 'you have got to be kidding me', 'Sue's gonna be so disappointed in me when I end up dumping a bag of flour over his head'—"

 

"Should've known that was premeditated," Nancy mutters.

 

"—and 'his butt looks nice in those jeans, though.'"

 

Peter peels Johnny's hand away from his mouth so he can face-palm instead, shaking his head. "You're an embarrassment, Jonathan Storm."

 

"Your embarrassment," Johnny croons, dropping a kiss on the exposed (and vibrantly red) back of Peter's neck.

 

"No, man, you're embarrassing all of us," Sam complains, throwing his hands in the air. "Andy, ask somebody a damn question already."

 

***

 

Peter has made a lot of mistakes in his life. A truly ungodly amount of mistakes, honestly—MJ likes to say that the entirety of his wardrobe is the first and foremost of them, and Gwen always argues that his college haircut was far and above worse than anything he's ever worn. Then Pete'll joke that his biggest regret was divorcing MJ, closely followed by _marrying_ MJ—it never fails to get a pillow swung into his face.

 

("Excuse me, but who divorced who here, Mr. Parker?")

 

But anyway, the point is that _choosing_ to work with Johnny Storm? Shaping up to beat pretty much every bad decision of his life, except for—well.

 

Skipping curfew the night that—

 

Well.

 

Peter rubs his temple; at least he remembered to wear contacts today, because he can already feel the need to bury his face in his hands and scream beginning to rise.

 

"We don't need flour," he grinds out, a vein throbbing under his fingertips, and Johnny continues to ignore him, climbing into the basket of their cart and using the car keys to break the plastic wrapped around the flat of flour bags.

 

" _You_ don't need flour," Johnny corrects. He shifts his weight to be able to shove the keys into the pocket of his obnoxiously tight pants, and Peter has to lunge forward to catch the cart and keep it from rolling away (or tipping, and taking their supplies and Johnny with it). "I'm making dessert."

 

"Have you guys found the stock yet?" Nancy asks, sounding distracted and vaguely out of breath, and Peter carefully switches his grip on the cart.

 

"No, Nancy, we haven't," he grinds out, then holds the phone close against his chest so Nancy can't hear them fighting, and demands, "I thought we agreed to avoid the _Top Chef_ dessert curse by skipping it entirely?"

 

Johnny shoves a bag of flour into his face.

 

"You all _said_ I needed to make that beef thing instead of dessert, but I never agreed. Will you take this already?" he wriggles it demandingly, and the cart gives an ominous creak. "I'm gonna fall if I try to lean down and I can't just drop it."

 

Peter bats at the flour, scowling as he locks eyes with Johnny—he's furious, the metal wire of the cart pressing painfully into his palm from how tightly he's gripping the edge, and Johnny has his jaw set in a stubborn line, eyes sparking with annoyance. "Or you could just put it back on the shelf where it belongs, _since there's no way we're doing a dessert course_."

 

"Are you guys fighting instead of getting stuff done?" Nancy demands. "We don't have time for—I knew I should have insisted Johnny pair off with Kraven."

 

And Peter knew he should have picked Doreen for front of house, despite her lesser experience. He lifts the phone again, refusing to drop eye contact as he tells her, "Johnny still wants to make dessert."

 

"I thought we decided—"

 

"Peter decided, and it's my dish," Johnny snaps. "Take the damn flour, Parker, don't make me come down there."

 

Peter snorts. "If you came down here, you'd have to put the flour back on the shelf."

 

The words aren't even out of his mouth before he realizes the mistake he's made.

 

"No, no, that was not a challenge, Johnny, so help me—"

 

Johnny kneels, twisting carefully to keep his weight centered, and drops the bag the last few inches—the thud is the acoustic equivalent of a middle finger, Peter's pretty sure, based on how Johnny raises one eyebrow and smirks like he's just won the argument.

 

"Fine. Fine!" Peter throws his hands in the air- accidentally losing the pen he's been checking ingredients off with in the process- and takes a step to the side, trying to stay in Johnny's line of sight as he rises back up to grab a second bag. "We don't have time to argue, just get your damn flour and let's—"

Peter freezes.

 

Johnny freezes.

 

The camerawoman who's been trying desperately to hold in her giggles finally busts out laughing.

 

"Huh," Johnny says, tilting the bag carefully back upright as Peter carefully brushes flour away from his eyes. He inspects the bag in his hand, eyebrows near his hairline as he gestures vaguely to the lack of adhesive on the top flap. "Manufacturing defect."

 

 

"You're a manufacturing defect," Peter mutters, shaking a hand through his hair a couple of times and then sneezing from the cloud of dust he stirs up. Johnny cackles and braces one hand on the shelving so he can clamber out of the cart—he jogs around to Peter, brushing the flour away with quick efficient strokes.

 

"You know, Ben'n'I've poured flour on each other more times than I count," he says, laughing. (Up close, the way his laughter lights up his face is—nice. His teeth are very straight, and the smile lines around his eyes—it's nice. Peter hates it on principal.) When he judges Peter's shoulders as clean as they're going to get, he clasps each of them in one big, warm hand, and explains the comment with a solemn, "I think I've inadvertently adopted you into the family."

 

Peter looks up at Johnny's big, dumb face, faux somber yet utterly sincere. He should probably respond with something like, "You just dropped a bag of flour on my head and now you suddenly think we're gonna be friends?"

 

Instead, he makes a disgruntled noise. "We're blood brothers now, and we didn't even get to shake ketchup-covered hands?"

 

Johnny beams at him, tugging him in for a hug- woah, muscles, how does he have time to be so buff _and_ so obnoxious- and Peter awkwardly claps him on the shoulder. "We should go finish our shopping now, or Sam's team is gonna cream us," he points out, slightly breathless from how tightly he's being squeezed, but Johnny doesn't let go immediately.

 

"This is the start of a beautiful friendship, Peter Parker," he says, sternly. "Enjoy the moment."

 

Peter pats Johnny's back again. "That's swell, hothead, but we only have like fifteen minutes left before we leave for _Whole Foods_."

 

"Oh, fuck."

 

***

 

Andy Cohen laughs, nodding over at Sam. "How's this for a question—" he grins, tilting his head as he glances over to the nearest camera. "Who do _you_ all think won Fan Favorite?"

 

"Me!" Patsy Walker declares, winking at Andy and tossing her hair back over her shoulder. She laughs, bright, and slouches sideways in her chair. "Nah, I wasn't in the competition long enough. I bet it was Cindy; who wasn't cheering her on as she blazed her way through _Last Chance Kitchen_?"

 

"Every one of us she beat out for that chance at redemption." Sam shrugs unrepentantly as Patsy jokingly boos at him. "Man, getting eliminated was bad enough; getting immediately knocked out of _Last Chance Kitchen_ was torture, no matter how many props our girl earned herself."

 

"Least you didn't get eliminated twice!" Cindy throws one hand in the air, green lipstick lips twisted in an expression that makes light of genuine emotion. "It was the worst!"

 

"I agree with what Gail said earlier," Foggy says thoughtfully, before the conversation can stray too far off-track. "Johnny's got too much charm not to win, no matter his other faults."

 

Johnny turns to look at Foggy. Squints. After a moment, he declares, "I'm both flattered and insulted."

 

"Mm, I second that theory as well. Based strictly on the number of explicit stories posted about them on the internet, it definitely has to be either Johnny or Peter," Felicia drawls, crossing one leg over the other and smirking as Peter shoots her a glare. "And we all know it isn't Peter."

 

So beautiful. _So evil_.

 

"Are people really out there writing stories about _Top Chef_ contestants?" Tom asks. His expression- and there is truly no other word for that level of sheer disbelief- is flabbergasted. "Is that really what people choose to _do_ with their time?"

 

"Oh, Tom." Doreen looks at him, eyebrows drawn together in sympathy. "The internet is a vast and glorious space, built out of ones and zeroes and more often than not manipulated into depicting a varying number of people of various genders gettin' it on with each other in a variety of ways."

 

Nancy nods sagely, her fingers twined loosely through Doreen's, their knees knocking together. "And yes, those people include you and us, although hopefully not you _and_ us, if you catch my drift."

 

Padma looks back and forth between them, a little twist of disbelief in the corners of her mouth. "And there's a shocking number of them about… Johnny and Peter?" she looks over at them, one eyebrow rising. "No offense, boys, but I can think of _much_ better creative subjects."

 

Peter sets his hand over his eyes. "I can't believe this is what we're talking about right now. Aunt May, whatever you do, please do not go and google any of this."

 

"What a world we live in. _Top Chef_ fanfiction," Gail says, wonderingly.

 

"I've written some," Cindy says, perfectly straight faced.

 

"Mm, which ones?" Felicia's canines are sharp as she grins, teeth glittering under the studio lights. "There's this one where—"

 

"Please stop," Peter says, and she laughs at him.

 

Her default state of being is probably laughing at him; she was probably born giggling, making her parents think she was a happy child, but really she was just sensing that he was a weird looking toddler whose mom thought it was hilarious to let him pick his own outfits.

 

"He's gonna have a flashback to that time MJ started reading fics aloud to him if you keep it up," Johnny adds, because he is no help, ever. "I liked the one where we got caught by Jameson, though; it really nailed—" he winks—"all of our speech patterns."

 

There are things about that statement that make him want to dump Johnny and move into Gwen and MJ's spare bedroom. But he can either encourage this line of conversation by virtue of _dis_ couraging this line of conversation, or he can give in and let it run its course. He sighs, dropping an arm over the back of Johnny chair, and rolls his eyes as he points out, "You just thought MJ's Jameson impression was funny."

 

Johnny grabs his chin in one hand, forcing Peter to look him in the eye as he states, fervently, "MJ's Jameson impression was _the best thing that ever happened to me_."

 

Gail holds up a hand for them to stop before Peter can respond, and out of Jewish solidarity he obligingly does not ignore it. "I know we've all asked you about this at least once, but now that the show is over I'm hoping you'll answer it: who _exactly_ is MJ?"

 

"She's—" Peter cuts off, yelping, as Johnny smacks him on the upper arm, glaring. He winces, grabbing at the spot, and explains, "I promised him that he could be the one to tell you all if it came up."

 

"Is anyone else getting worried?" Foggy mutters, as Johnny cracks his knuckles and lets a gleeful smile spread over his face.

 

"The mysterious MJ," Johnny begins, in the voice he uses to read bedtime stories to Val, "is Peter's best friend, but she is _also_ his ex-wife." He drapes an arm over Peter's chair, staring at the ceiling with a truly rapturous expression. "Our boy here was holding out on us, you see; his pal 'MJ' is none other than _Mary Jane Watson_."

 

There's silence for a long moment, and then Tom asks, slowly, "Mary Jane Watson, like—"

 

Johnny closes his eyes. "Yes."

 

Padma tilts her head to the side. "You mean the soap opera—"

 

Johnny's head thunks sideways onto Peter's shoulder. " _Yes._ "

 

"You're telling me that scrawny, nerdy, asshole-ish Peter Parker- no offense Peter—"

 

Peter rubs his temples. "No, Kate, believe me; I've been in the same place you are."

 

She nods, reaches back to pat him on the knee. "It's just that I never expected to be jealous of you, Peter."

 

"I worked with Mary Jane before I quit modeling!" Patsy exclaims, and—and Peter had completely forgotten about that, honestly. "God, she's a riot; she told the best stories, there was this one…" she trails off, slowly reaching to either side to grab Danny's and Nancy's knees, and Peter buries his face in his hands.

 

"The chinchilla story is about _you_ ," Patsy breathes, tone full of wonder.

 

***

 

Peter drops, bonelessly, on top of Johnny, and presses his face into the crook of his neck, glasses going askew. "Hey," he says, eyes crinkling with the force of the—well, it's not love, _obviously_ , because it's way too early in their relationship for that, but. Love. That's taken up residence in his gut since they got back to New York.

 

"Hey," Johnny says back, sounding just as illogically smitten. He cups the nape of Peter's neck with one hand and traces idle circles with his thumb—Peter shifts his hips out of the way so he can reach down and readjust the buckle of Johnny's belt where it digs into his stomach.

 

"So…" he drawls. He'd come over with the intent to start a conversation, but he's been on his feet all day and Johnny's warm and gorgeous and smells nice, and… Peter's kind of losing his train of thought. He presses a soft kiss to the skin at the junction between neck and shoulder, and Johnny hums pleasantly, almost more vibration than noise.

 

"So…" Johnny mocks gently, when a full minute passes in silence.

 

Peter hums, toying with the hem of Johnny's shirt with one hand, and bites back a yawn to murmur, "MJ's on her way over, by the way."

 

Johnny tenses. "What?"

 

"Uh." Peter pushes up onto one hand, brow furrowing, and settles his glasses back onto his nose so he can squint at Johnny properly. His eyes are wide, hands gripping tight at Peter's hips, and Peter licks his lips slowly as his own eyes narrow. "MJ? My best friend? We—did I imagine this conversation, I thought you pestered me into explaining, like, the second our feet hit the tarmac."

 

Johnny hands flex and then he pushes Peter out of the way to stand, striding determinedly in the direction of the bathroom. "When's she gonna be here?" he calls, as Peter struggles to straighten out of the couch cushions he'd been unceremoniously dumped into.

 

"Uh—" He picks a bit of lint out of his mouth. "Twenty minutes?"

 

He can hear Johnny suck in a large breath before asking, "So I have time to prepare then?"

 

Peter stares at the only bit of Johnny that he can see, which is his butt—he's leaning over, messing with his hair in the mirror or tweezing his eyebrows or something. (Not that Pete's complaining about staring at Johnny's butt, per se, but he's too befuddled to appreciate it properly.) "Prepare for… what?"

 

"Dude, I don't—" Johnny straightens, throwing his hands and the air, and walks a few steps back towards Peter. "What's the protocol for meeting your boyfriend's best friend when she's also his ex-wife?!?"

 

Peter squints. Johnny's hair is sticking up in a few places, which _never_ happens, and his eyes are wide, his breathing heavy. "Are you… are you nervous, Johnny?"

 

Johnny huffs, and stalks back into the bathroom. "That's ridiculous. What do I have to be nervous about, just the most important person in your life except for your aunt, who I already know adores me because we tweet each other all the time."

 

"MJ's gonna love you, Johnny," Peter promises, fumbling his way off of the couch. "You guys are gonna get along scarily well, actually; I'd be worried that you'd leave me for her if she and Gwen weren't—" He freezes in the middle of his living room, narrowing his eyes, and Johnny leans out of the bathroom to raise an eyebrow at him. "Aunt May has a twitter?"

 

Johnny snorts, leaning back towards the mirror. "Get with the program, Parker."

 

Peter sets his hands on his hips, drumming his fingers and scowling. "What other social media accounts am I unaware of?" he demands. "Snapchat?"

 

"Duh."

 

He sets a hand over his heart, stuttering out, "I-I can't believe she hasn't added me!" and only half-joking.

 

"You put too much effort into it," Johnny tells him. His tone is long-suffering, which is extremely unfair because they've only been having this argument for _maybe_ a month. "No one wants to compete with a guy who actually applies composition theory to his selfies."

 

"Snapchat isn't a competition," Peter scoffs.

 

"You just think that because you're winning." Johnny grumbles, in that way that probably means he's rolling his eyes, and adds, "Besides, she never sends pictures of herself, just her various projects, and I'm sure she shows you those in person."

 

"Well." Peter deflates. "I guess that's true, but—"

 

"Sue thinks that scarf she knitted you is adorable, by the way."

 

Peter throws his hands in the air. "I can't believe _Sue_ hasn't added me!"

 

Johnny sighs, reemerging from the bathroom- hair perfect- and gently tugs Peter around to drape his arms over Peter's shoulders and pull him in close. "Face it, tiger," he says, with a stupid little smirk on his stupidly perfect face. "You're the less lovable Parker."

 

Peter drops his head forward, bumping the crown against Johnny's collarbone—"There's really no need to rub it in," he complains, but takes his opportunity to stick his hands in Johnny's back pockets.

 

Johnny snickers, clenching under Peter's fingertips. "Can't keep your hands off me, huh, Pete?"

 

"Just shut up and enjoy it, Johnny."

 

"Wow, déjà vu. Is it last night all over—"

 

"Oh my _god_ , Johnny."

 

"C'mon, that was hilarious and you—" Johnny cuts off, tensing once more, as footsteps in the hall grow louder. They pass, and he relaxes again, huffing a self-deprecating laugh.

 

Peter murmurs, "Hey," squeezing slightly and then drawing back to look Johnny in the eye. "I promise there's no reason to be nervous, okay?"

 

Johnny scoffs, breaking eye contact. "What, and if she doesn't like me, you dump her?"

 

"Yeah, sure," Peter says, blasé, and Johnny's gaze snaps back to him, eyebrows rising. He shrugs. "Yeah, you know, if she doesn't like you, then I dump her, and if you don't like her, then I dump you. If you both don't like each other, Gwen and I eat popcorn while you mudwrestle for supremacy."

 

Johnny almost laughs, and then he schools his face into a frown. "You're the worst."

 

"I am," Peter concedes, stretching up that scant inch Johnny had on him, capturing his lips in a kiss. "Nothing to worry about," he reiterates, and Johnny huffs again like he still wants to argue—

 

But Peter's pretty good at distracting him.

 

MJ bangs at their door ten minutes later- they've relocated to the couch, paying vague attention to the _Friends_ rerun Johnny had been watching before and vague attention to Johnny's thumb tracing circles on Peter's hip- and shouts, "Better not be naked in there, Parker; I'm coming in!"

 

"She never gave back her key," Peter explains, long-suffering, as MJ blows into the apartment, windswept and beautiful and smiling with that glint in her eye that's never not spelled trouble.

 

"Hi, Johnny," she says, propping one hand on her hip and wiggling her eyebrows.

 

"Mary Jane?!?" Johnny exclaims, head snapping back and forth from her to Peter. "You—when you were explaining who MJ was, you didn't think 'soap opera star who regularly brings her girlfriend-turned-fiancée to my family's ridiculously expensive restaurant' was relevant?!?"

 

Peter gasps. "You take Gwen to _Four_? You never took me to _Four_!"

 

MJ snickers, winking and blowing him a kiss. "That's because you're embarrassing, Pete. C'mon, Johnny, gimme a hug; I've missed you."

 

Johnny disentangles his limbs from Peter's and bounds forward, catching her and scooping her up, laughing loudly. "God, what a small world. I can't believe this."

 

"Somehow, I'm not surprised; honestly, between the two of you you probably know the whole of New York," Peter muses, but Johnny isn't listening and MJ, towering over both of them in her stilettos, just smirks at him over Johnny's head. He narrows his eyes back at her and her smile widens, and suddenly it strikes him odd that MJ never told him she and Johnny were friends.

 

There's a tendril of foreboding snaking through his gut.

 

Johnny drops MJ back to the ground, beaming up at her. "Pete and I meet on a reality TV show, hating each other's guts from the start, and all along I'm friends with his ex… wife…"

 

Johnny trails off.

 

MJ starts cackling.

 

He turns, slowly, a smile stretching across his face, and Peter feels himself draw up straighter in his seat, that foreboding in his gut doubling in strength. "Mary Jane's not just your ex-wife," Johnny muses. "You're _her_ ex-husband."

 

Peter licks his lips, pushing his glasses back up his nose, and cautiously agrees. "Well, yes that is… typically how it works…"

 

"So every story that I've been told about Mary Jane and Gwen's mutual scrawny ex, with the awful hair—" he glances back at MJ, muttering—"I actually have no idea how I didn't put this together sooner. Anyway. Every story about the ex-husband is a story about you?" Johnny looks positively gleeful. "Including the one about—"

 

"Tell me you didn't tell him the chinchilla story," Peter begs, fixing his gaze pleadingly on MJ, and she throws an arm around Johnny's waist to hold herself upright as she starts laughing even harder.

 

***

 

Peter throws his hands in the air, narrowly avoiding breaking Johnny's nose with his elbow. "How many strangers has she told this story to?" he demands, then turns to point at his eyes and then the nearest camera. "MJ, when I get home, we're having words."

 

"What story is this exactly?" Felicia asks, a thread of interest in her tone.

 

"Yeah, Patsy, share with the class!" Cindy adds, leaning forward to prod Patsy lightly in the shoulder.

 

"I would really, really rather she didn't," Peter says.

 

No one listens to him.

 

Patsy sucks in a ragged breath, clearly trying not to start laughing because she's not sure if she'll stop, and glances back towards Peter. "So, at four in the morning on a Tuesday night, Mary Jane gets a call from—" She hiccups with the effort to try and hold in her laughter, and buries her face in her hands, shaking her head.

 

"Whatever you think she was about to say, trust me, you're wrong," Johnny tells them, snickering. "No one's first thought is ever—"

 

Peter prods Johnny in the side, hard enough to get a surprised yelp, and glares at him. "We're not talking about this. The chinchilla story is the most embarrassing chain of events in my life, and I made out with you on national television."

 

Patsy accepts a handkerchief from Doreen- her efforts to reign in her laughter had brought tears to her eyes- and delicately dabs at her makeup. "Honestly, I have never understood how she agreed to marry you after all of that."

 

Peter huffs. "Well, I mean, once we got the ring back from the Swedish pigeon breeder—"

 

"Wait, wait, wait. The chinchilla story is the story of your proposal?" Gail cuts in, eyebrows rising high.

 

("Swedish pigeon breeder?" Doreen mouths, looking thoughtful.)

 

Peter pulls off his glasses, cleaning the lenses on Johnny's t-shirt and wrinkling his nose as he explains, "Well, sort of; it's the story of how I attempted to propose and failed in the most spectacular manner possible- we're talking Chandler and Monica with the dial turned up to eleven, here- and at the end of it MJ started wearing the ring and informed me we were engaged. Because, and this is as close to a quote as I can remember, 'I think if you try that again one of us might die in the process, and ending up stranded in New Jersey in an Easter Bunny costume was bad enough'."

 

"An Easter Bunny a costume," Padma repeats.

 

"Our only options were Easter Bunny and the local high school mascot, and she didn't want to have to deal with a tail." Peter waves a hand. "It's not important."

 

Johnny snickers, and Peter elbows him firmly in the side. "It's _not important_ ," he repeats, as Patsy gives an un-ladylike snort and slaps a hand over her mouth. "You two just shut the—Andy! You know, I think Kate won Fan Favorite, tell me if I'm right."

 

"You aren't." Andy laughs. "Sorry, Kate."

 

"I'm heartbroken," she drawls, tilting her head back to smirk at Peter. "Maybe if someone told me the chinchilla story, I'd feel better."

 

Peter hands his glasses to Johnny (who obligingly folds them up and hangs them from the collar of his v-neck) and plucks Kate's sunglasses off of her face, telling her, "Nice try." He slides them on, crossing his arms over his chest, and leans into Johnny's side. "Well, it isn't Kate, it probably isn't anyone- other than maybe Cindy- who went home in the first half of the season, and I _highly_ doubt it's me, so that leaves, what, Sam, Johnny, Nancy, and Doreen?"

 

 

"And Otto," Johnny whispers into his ear, then snickers when Peter pulls a face.

 

"I said at the start of the show that the voting was anyone's game until the last twenty minutes, but…" Andy flips through his index cards- a dozen questions they'll never actually get to- and pulls one out of the stack. "I've got some stats here to put that in perspective. We had three different people tie for fourth place; Sam, Nancy, and Felicia." There's a smattering of applause, and Doreen leans over to press a kiss to Nancy's cheek, beaming. Andy continues, "They collectively came in just a few percentage points behind our third place Fan Favorite, none other than Ms. Cindy Moon."

 

"Oh, that's so nice!" Cindy beams and accepts the high-five that Sam leans forward to give her; Peter leads the enthusiastic applause that spreads across the room (even Felicia lazily brings her hands together a couple of times).

 

When the clapping fades away once more- Johnny places his hands over Peter's to stop him, shaking his head- Andy says, with a smile so wide it looks physically painful, "Our first and second place contestants traded places no less than seventeen times throughout the two week span of the competition, until an eleventh hour push from one of their fanbases took the winner over the top by a couple hundred votes."

 

There's a camera turned in their direction, but by this point Peter doesn't even care. He tilts his chin, nose brushing the underside of Johnny's jaw as he murmurs, "It's you," eyes closed and a little smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

 

"Is not," Johnny mutters back, and flicks Peter lightly on the cheek. "You're biased."

 

Peter huffs out a breath, enjoying the way Johnny twitches slightly at the feeling, and shakes his head. "My bias doesn't make me wrong," he insists, even as Johnny gives his own annoyed, disbelieving huff—but that's Johnny for you, a two foot shell of confidence hiding two miles of insecurity.

 

" _Second place_ in the Fan Favorite Competition," Andy announces, slightly louder in that way that means he can tell people's attentions are wandering, "is the one and only Doreen Green—"

 

"That's my girl!" Nancy crows, fist-pumping.

 

"—only narrowly beaten out by our winner, Mr. Johnny Storm! Congratulations, you two!"

 

"You're kidding me," Johnny blurts, as Peter buries a laugh into his shoulder. He blindly accepts the handshake that Doreen turns in her seat to give him, round cheeks dimpling with the force of her smile. "You—wow, that's incredible. Thank you," he says, finding the nearest camera, and Peter shifts back towards his own chair to let Johnny lean forward, hands spread and an open sincerity in his face. "Honestly, this, uh—" he clears his throat. "This means a lot to me, you guys. _Top Chef_ has the best fans; that's been proven time and time again, I think."

 

"Johnny, are you getting choked up?" Padma asks, giving a soft, disbelieving laugh, and Peter lets Kate's glasses slide far enough down his nose to be able to peer over their frames—sure enough, there's a certain glisten in his eyes to match the hitch in his voice.

 

"No!" Johnny catches one stray tear with his thumb before it can quite form, wiping it away with a huff of annoyance. "Well, maybe a little."

 

Peter fumbles to pull off Kate's glasses properly and reclaims his own so he doesn't have to squint his way through carefully sliding them onto Johnny's face. "There," he says, a thread of satisfaction in his tone. "Now no one can see your shame."

 

"He's so supportive, Johnny; I can really see why ya like 'im," Cindy jokes.

 

Johnny doesn't respond except to readjust the sunglasses where Peter hadn't quite gotten one leg over his ear; then he lifts his chin so that his eyes, through the illusion of the dark lenses, appear to be fixed somewhere in the middle distance above the judges' heads.

 

Peter waves a hand to indicate Johnny's person—the glasses, dark tinted and with pastel purple frames, go surprisingly well with Johnny's blue v-neck, and his mouth is set in a thin, stubborn line. "The glasses elevate his persona," he explains. "He's gone from strangely touched by an internet poll to aloof from the entirety of these proceedings. If he had hair gel in his pockets he'd probably be trying to emulate Kenickie."

 

"You two weirdos are made for each other," Felicia mutters.

 

Peter chooses to believe she means this in a kind way; "Aren't we?" he murmurs back, feeling his smile turn dopier than he'd intended as his gaze traces the sharp lines of Johnny's profile.

 

Kate turns around in her seat, eyes flicking from Peter to Johnny and mouth twisting at the corners. "Are you planning to give those back?" she asks, somewhere between amusement and annoyance.

 

Peter hums. "Not really."

 

Johnny lowers the glasses slightly, gazing at her over the rims, and shakes his head.

 

Kate sucks in a breath. Narrows her eyes. Opens her mouth to say something undoubtedly scathing—

 

And Andy Cohen claps his hands twice, beaming. "Finally, the reunion is complete; judges, chefs, viewers—please welcome the final member of this season's judging panel, previously delayed due to scheduling conflicts. J. Jonah Jameson, it's a true pleasure to see you again, sir!"

 

***

 

"I'm feeling confident; definitely expecting top three, maybe even a win."

 

Peter rubs at the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes tightly shut behind his glasses and he tries to ignore the blonde guy on the other side of the room, talking loudly and lounging in his plastic fold-up chair like it's the most comfortable thing in the world.

 

("Blonde guy", who is he trying to kid? He may not have learned everyone's name yet, but he recognized the perfect swoop of his hair and the little smirk at the corners of his lips the instant he saw him. His family owns _Four_ ; he's been on the cover of half a dozen magazines, both solo and in group shots with a blonde woman with the same smirk but more warmth in her eyes, a tall, slender man, and an even taller, beefier man with substantial scarring. Peter doesn't even really know what Johnny's doing here, except as cosmic retribution for Peter forgetting to kiss Aunt May's cheek before he left for the airport.)

 

"Uh huh," Kate Bishop says, sounding oh-so-interested. She uncrosses her arms to readjust the sunglasses that may as well be glued to her nose, and Johnny's diatribe doesn't falter for a second.

 

The stew room is crowded, this early in the season, and Peter can pick out the people whose days didn't go well by the tension in their frames, the anxious twists of their mouths, the way their eyes glance to the door every five seconds or so. He'd be one of them if he wasn't distracting himself by glaring daggers across the room at the world's cockiest _Top Chef_ contestant.

 

(Fine; give Johnny some credit—Marcel was worse.)

 

Peter rubs his nose again.

 

"My pork came out—" Johnny kisses his fingertips and spreads them wide. "Perfect."

 

Peter licks his lips and debates about how rude it would be to loudly respond, "No one cares." Would it be enough for Aunt May to get that disappointed look in her eye? He's pretty sure it would. And will he ever finally get old enough to willingly invoke that? He's almost thirty; his first thought when confronted with adversity should not be "If I release my inner asshole, I'm gonna get in _so much trouble_."

 

"I'm used to high-pressure environments, working at _Four_ , so—"

 

"Thank god," Peter bursts out as Padma opens the door to the stew room. (Felicia Hardy cracks a smile at his expense, and Johnny shoots him look that says something along the lines of, "Who's this guy? Why is he being weird?")

 

Padma, however, ignores him, which is an extremely valid response. Peter drags a hand down his face and straightens from where he's been sitting, elbows braced on either knee; Padma's gaze flicks over him briefly as she surveys the room. "The judges would like to talk to Johnny, Kate, and Peter," she says, after several short but _long_ moments. "Thank you."

 

"Told you," Johnny stage whispers, wearing an easy smile as he rises to his feet and stretches casually—and Peter is not looking at the little strip of skin where his shirt rides up, he's not.

 

"Go get 'em, tiger," Felicia tells Peter, giving him a little shove, and he subtly flips her off as he stumbles after the others. (He's known her for two days, and that's plenty long enough to know she's being sarcastic, even if he has no idea what about; she's the worst.)

 

(He likes her a lot, actually.)

 

(Don't tell anyone he said that.)

 

Judges' Table is pretty much exactly as intimidating as he expected it to be; cameras everywhere, dim lighting, Tom and Gail and Padma and Jameson all wearing utterly impassive faces. (From everything he's heard of Jameson, he doesn't expect that to last long. He seems like the kind of guy whose mustache can do little to disguise the distasteful curl of his lip for long.) He clasps one hand in the other behind his back, resisting the urge to reach up a hand and pat nervously at his hair, and mentally forces his shoulders back, his spine straighter.

 

"Any idea why you're here?" Padma asks, dark eyes giving nothing away, and Peter shoots Johnny a glance when the other chef gives a short laugh, rocking back on his heels. His thumbs are hooked in the pockets of his pants, his posture relaxed.

 

"I have my suspicions," Kate offers, though her tone doesn't imply anything either way.

 

"Not a goddamn clue," Peter announces, for the sake of honesty. Because he tried Kate's dish- he can't pronounce the name and wouldn't want to insult her by trying- and he _knows_ she isn't in the bottom, but that would have to mean _he's in the top_. He's too finicky with his food, he knows, puts too much thought into technique and flavor to worry about texture and composition; it's hard to let go of years of chemistry classes, even if he never did finish that degree.

 

Padma cracks a smile. "Then I get to be the bearer of good news; congratulations to all three of you for being the best dishes of our twentieth season's first challenge."

 

"Well, duh," Johnny says; Kate punches him lightly.

 

"Do you have any chill, dude?" she asks, exasperated, but Johnny rolls his shoulder to mitigate her fist and his eyes to mitigate her words.

 

(Peter drags a hand down his face, lets some of the tension bleed out of his frame—that recurring nightmare of getting sent home first is defeated, and if Jameson's 'stache would stop staring him down, then maybe he'd even be able to be a bit excited.)

 

"Kate, your stew was delicious," Gail says, fingers lacing together on the table top as she leans forward slightly, and Kate murmurs her thanks. "The beef was tender, your use of kimchi ingenious, and 'hardy and warm' was a great decision for the time of year and an outdoor setting."

 

A smile tugs at the corner of Kate's mouth when Pete leans forward slightly to be able to peer around Johnny. "Thank y—"

 

"Young woman," Jameson says, gruffly, cutting her off mid-word, "do you realize how rude it is to wear sunglasses inside?"

 

Kate tilts her head to the side, and her smile, from small and sincere, grows to wide and sarcastic. "Yep." She pops the 'p', pushes the glasses up rather unnecessarily (and with a suspicious digit), and Jameson's entire face seems to be flushing an angry purple-red.

 

There's a long beat of silence, Jameson glaring and Kate smiling, and then Tom clears his throat awkwardly. "You were incredibly consistent, flavorwise," he says, dragging the conversation back on track. "Did you make one large batch?"

 

She inclines her head; the reflective lenses of her glasses catch the light and a vein throbs in Jameson's temple. "Got it in one," she tells Tom.

 

"An excellent decision and an excellent dish," Padma says. She turns, motioning to Johnny, and adds, "Your dish, too, was utterly delicious; I saw at least one person attempting to surreptitiously lick their plate clean."

 

"And I was tempted myself," Gail chimes in, laughing. "The apple chutney was my favorite part of the night."

 

"I'll send you a couple jars of the stuff when this is all said and done." Johnny grins, winks, and Gail rolls her eyes, but she at least looks amused (Peter mostly just wishes he had some duct tape and explicit permission to use it with impunity).

 

"Your pork was impeccable, flavor balance was nice, the asparagus on the side was just the right side of crisp." Tom nods, glancing at the other judges for their approval as he says, "We're expecting a lot of you this season."

 

"I'll take a jar of that chutney you're making for Gail," Jameson adds, a rare word of praise; he speaks the most when it's the _bottom_ three standing in front of him.

 

Peter rocks forward on his heels, and maybe Padma catches in his face a glimpse of the impatience he's trying to shove down because she turns her attention to him, faint smile on her face, before he's even settled back into place. "Peter, your dish was… entirely unexpected."

 

"It took me half of my plate to decide whether or not I actually liked it," Gail agrees. She holds up a hand when Peter's eyebrows shoot up into his hairline—"And then that little hint of nutmeg came through and it all just…" she makes a vague gesture with her hands, a little bit of disbelief and a little bit of respect in the lines of her face. "Came together."

 

"Incredibly cerebral, incredibly sophisticated—a little weird, too, but definitely a knockout. Keep cooking like that and you can stop freaking out in the stew room." Tom laughs a little louder than Peter finds strictly necessary, and he can feel an embarrassed flush creeping over his neck.

 

"Tell that to my anxiety," he jokes, though it falls flat when Gail and Padma's faces flicker with concern. (Somewhere in the aether, MJ facepalms.) Peter clears his throat, scratching at the back of his neck, and amends, "Uh, I mean, thanks. I'll try to keep it up."

 

"In my opinion, that'd be your worst course of action," Jameson announces, sitting up straighter in his chair. He prods one thick finger in Peter's direction, mustache bristling, and Peter feels his eyebrows skyrocket once more. "Your food was far too fussy and I never tasted this supposed nutmeg."

 

This is not the time to blatantly insult one of the major season judges, this is not the time to blatantly—

 

"Maybe it was just too subtle for anything but a sophisticated palate?" Peter offers.

 

Really, it's Jameson's fault for giving him such an obvious opening—but the man, the myth, the legend does not seem to agree. He turns red, then purple, then red again, and leans forward, hands splayed flat on the table in front of him. "Excuse me?!?" he demands.

 

***

 

"Pleasure to be here," Jameson says, gruff. (Everything he says is gruff; Peter rationally knows that this is due to all the cigars but irrationally would like to believe it's because Jameson is one hundred mice in a skin suit with a voice modulator that only has one setting.) The critic takes his seat to a half-hearted smattering of applause, and his sharp eyes pick out Cindy first, to offer her a friendly mustache-twitch, and then Peter, to narrow his eyes and noticeably sniff with distaste.

 

"I missed him," Johnny says, faux dreamy, and leans heavily into Peter's side.

 

"You're sleeping on the couch tonight," Peter mutters in response. Johnny's shoulders shake with silent laughter because he knows Peter's bluffing—the singular time Peter's tried to kick Johnny out of bed, Johnny invited Gwen, MJ, and his friend Wyatt over to build a blanket fort in the living room. And then kicked _Peter_ out of it.

 

"How've you been, Jonah?" Andy asks, leaning forward with that same wide smile still plastered on his face.

 

"Busy, Andy." Jameson barks a laugh, and his fingers drum on the arms of his chair like he wishes he had a cigar to hold in them. "The rest of the culinary world doesn't pause for the _Top Chef_ season."

 

"I'd say! But that doesn't mean the culinary world doesn't have its eye on what we're doing here, huh?" Andy turns back to the chefs, consulting his notecards with a genuinely pleased tilt to his smile. "Several of you have recently been successful in a particularly interesting business venture, haven't you? Otto, Eddie, Kraven, Max, care to elaborate?"

 

There's a long moment where the four of them silently argue over who has to answer the question, and finally Eddie rolls his eyes. "After the show, we individually decided to try our hands at owning and running a food truck. Then when we found out about each other's plans and decided for a number of reasons that banding together would be the smart thing to do," he says. His thick arms are crossed over his chest, his lips slightly pinched. "We reached out to a couple other guys—"

 

"Adrian Toomes and Quentin Beck," Max Dillon interjects. He slouches in his seat, mumbling, "Beck's gonna have a fucking cow that this is how his name ends up on television."

 

Eddie snorts and then agrees. "Yeah, Toomes and Beck. So we came up with a comprehensive plan to coordinate menus and cross-promote to customers—"

 

"Primarily strategized by myself." Octavius smiles thinly.

 

Eddie and Max visibly roll their eyes, and Peter coughs a laugh into his fist. "Anyway," Eddie says, "we formed a coalition of food trucks and started strategically positioning ourselves around the city, and with each others' cooperation and the publicity from the show, we've been doing well."

 

"I hear they've been nicknamed the 'Sinister Six' by the other trucks in the area," Peter mutters to Johnny. "They're aggressive about claiming prime spots and they're able to charge low enough rates due to the volume of traffic they attract that everyone else is having a hard time competing."

 

"You've been actively following the news about all of us contestants, haven't you, you fucking nerd," is all Johnny mumbles back.

 

"This whole food truck thing has me baffled," Jameson announces, locking eyes combatively with Eddie, presumably due to his role as the reluctant spokesperson for the Six. "Who would pay outrageous amounts of money for food handed down to them through a window, made on subpar equipment, and with a distinct lack of air conditioning or customer service? It's just another passing trend, and you boys should look into getting out before people get bored and your profit margins drop."

 

"Our profit margins are better than yours, old man," Kraven grunts. "We are fine."

 

Jameson's moustache bristles with indignity as he draws himself straight in his chair. "I'll have you know—"

 

"We're almost out of time here, folks!" Andy Cohen interrupts, loudly. "Are there any parting words you'd like to leave with our viewers?"

 

"Don't do drugs," Johnny says, immediately. "And if Michael Bay tells you a role is going to make your career, don't believe him."

 

"You've never spoken to Michael Bay in your life, Johnny," Peter sighs.

 

Johnny's eyes crinkle with the sideways grin he shoots Peter, and he nudges him with an elbow as he whispers, "Oh, come on, give me some credit; he _did_ come to _Four_ that one time," underneath Doreen spouting a spontaneous and heartfelt message about following your dreams and never giving up and embracing maple syrup as a lifestyle choice.

 

(There's a distinct possibility the latter is a metaphor, given the way Doreen smiles fondly at Nancy as she says it—but Doreen is also Canadian, so who knows how many secret syrup-related opinions she harbors.)

 

"That's ridiculous and I absolutely do not believe you," Peter whispers back to Johnny, as stubbornly as the time he'd denied having watched Franklin and Val defile the kitchen and let Sue blame Johnny instead. (He actually does sort of remember Johnny telling him about Michael Bay's appearance, now that he's mentioned it, but there are a number of hills that Peter Parker is willing to die on, and refusing to admit Johnny's right is one of them.)

 

Johnny sighs, dropping his cheek to Peter's shoulder as he laments, "I should go out and find a boyfriend who's actually willing to take my word for things once in a while."

 

***

 

"This is taking forever," Johnny mutters. He's got a wine bottle in hand, long fingers picking at the edges of the label, and he's clearly contemplating opening it—there's not much to do in the stew room besides drink and wallow, and so long as they don't get drunk enough to fall over on camera, it's probably fine. "Jesus, why is this taking so long?"

 

"We all did good tonight." Peter grabs the bottle from Johnny and Nancy tosses him the corkscrew. He catches it with a minimum of fumbling, his cheeks barely even flushing with embarrassment, and once the bottle's open he takes a long drink. (His palette wasn't made for wine; it all tastes a bit like lighter fluid to him, but he's not in the mood to equivocate.) Johnny takes it back, and Peter clamps down on every memory of MJ stealing his beer and joking about indirect kisses.

 

He watches Johnny's throat bob and elaborates, "If Sam's pie hadn't been fucking brilliant—"

 

"Requirement of the job when you get hired by the White House?" Nancy muses—

 

"Then there's every chance we'd've won. Which means no one did so badly they know exactly who to send home—"

 

"Which means we've all got our heads on the chopping block," Johnny concludes grimly. He rests his forehead against the bottle, eyes fluttering shut, and Peter really wishes that they hadn't spontaneously become friends at the start of this stupid challenge so he could go back to hoping irrationally that Johnny would get sent home every week.

 

"I was just gonna say that they have a lot to discuss, but, yeah." Peter takes off his glasses and rubs at the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes tightly shut. "But it's mine to lose, right?"

 

"What do you mean?" Kraven asks. It's hard to read his tone through the accent, but Peter's pretty sure he's as on edge as the rest of them. Being in the bottom when the judges don't have anything per se bad to say about your food is worse than having them ream you; you did a good job, but you could go home anyway.

 

Peter shoves his glasses back on, smiling thinly as he meets Kraven's steely gaze and gestures vaguely to himself. "I was the executive chef, Kraven. The brunt of the service and menu quibbles are on me."

 

Johnny punches his shoulder, lightly, and Peter flicks his gaze over to him. "I made dessert, though," he says, toasting with the wine bottle before taking a swig and passing it over to Peter. "That's always a recipe for disaster on _Top Chef_."

 

"Too bad no one on the other team made risotto," Nancy jokes. She sounds tired and moody, and Peter offers her the wine. She smiles thinly (but possibly genuinely). "I'll pass, Pete, but thanks."

 

Peter shrugs; the bottle's emptying pretty fast just between himself and Johnny anyway. "The judges like you too much to send you home for practically non-existent flaws in your food," he says, throwing an arm around Johnny's chair, around Johnny's shoulders. Johnny curls a hand around the cool glass of the wine bottle, and Peter lets his fingers slide away before they can touch. He groans, drops his face onto Johnny's shoulder, and mumbles a muffled, "Jesus, I can't believe I'm going home on Restaurant Wars; Aunt May's gonna cry. It's her favorite episode of the season."

 

"It's everyone's favorite episode of the season," Nancy points out.

 

"And you're not going home." Johnny flicks him on the temple, and Peter lifts his head, blinking, to find a stubborn scowl settled across Johnny's face. "There's no way the dessert curse is skipping me; Sam already smashed it to bits with his divine interpretation of an apple pie, so that means it's got something to prove."

 

Peter snorts. "Dessert Curse II: This Time, It's Personal."

 

"Don't you scoff at me, Parker," Johnny mutters. "If one of us is goin' home, we should—phone numbers." He shoves the wine bottle into Peter's chest and lets go without waiting for Peter to grab it, leaving it to slosh over both of their jeans before Peter can steady it. Johnny fumbles through his pockets. "We're flour brothers, we've gotta… I don't have a pen."

 

"M'either." Peter dabs at his jeans half-heartedly with the sleeve of his chef coat. "I'm good at numbers, you could just tell me."

 

"Nah, man, carrier pigeons are the way to go," Nancy tells them, deadpan, and Johnny tilts his head in consideration. Peter likes the way Johnny's forehead crinkles when he thinks; he hadn't noticed it before now because he was too busy being annoyed by Johnny's general existence.

 

"Too much bird poop," Johnny finally decides. "Who wants to have to deal with all of that?"

 

"We're in the same city; smoke signals?" Peter offers.

 

"Ugh, I don't want to smell like smoke all the time. Besides, we wouldn't be able to tell it apart from the smog. What about paper messages rolled up and delivered inside eggs each day?"

 

Peter huffs, rolling his eyes. "We aren't wizards, Johnny, we can't steal our ideas from _Harry Potter_." (As endearing as it is that Johnny can so casually reference _Harry Potter_.)

 

Johnny snaps his fingers, beaming. "Easter eggs!"

 

Peter almost doesn't want to burst his bubble, but he still wrinkles his nose and takes a sip of the wine, saying apologetically, "I'm Jewish."

 

Johnny narrows his eyes. "So?"

 

Peter gives Johnny a flat look.

 

Johnny spreads his hands in a gesture of confusion.

 

Peter thins his lips, removing his arm from around Johnny's shoulder as his eyebrows climb well up onto his forehead, and finally—Johnny abruptly makes a noise of understanding and buries his face in his hands. "You're Jewish, and Jewish people don't celebrate Easter, and you don't have any Easter eggs, and I'm an asshole."

 

"Only a little bit of an asshole," Peter says magnanimously, taking pity on how genuinely bad Johnny seems to feel, and adds, "and I could buy some, but it seems a bit illogical to own a dozen Easter eggs for the express purpose of clandestine message exchanges that'll only require one."

 

"Yeah," Nancy agrees. "That's the illogical part."

 

Peter turns, pointing at her (with the hand holding the wine bottle; his grip is tenuous but effective), eyebrows rising once more. "You, Nancy Whitehead, are very sassy. I don't appreciate it when Johnny and I are attempting to bond, but let's be friends when this is all said and done."

 

"Okay, Pete." Nancy takes the wine from him and points at the pocket of his chef coat. "You have a pen in your pocket, by the way, if you two still wanna write your numbers on each other's hands like middle schoolers."

 

"Oh, good." Peter presents the pen to Johnny with a smile that feels sour at the corners. "This way when I go home, I have something to fondly remember you by, other than the flour that's still in my hair two showers later."

 

"You're not going home," Johnny insists, his hands closing around Peter's, his blue eyes serious. "Pete, you gotta trust me, okay? You're not."

 

Peter lets out a soft breath, not breaking eye contact. "Sure, Johnny. Whatever you say."

 

***

 

The moments between the episode ending and them leaving are a blur: Cindy and Peter hug, promising to keep in touch, and Peter hugs Felicia, which she tolerates for ten or fifteen seconds before extricating herself. Doreen and Nancy kiss Johnny on either cheek when he leans down far enough to let them, and when Kate reclaims her glasses, she pushes them on with a smug glance at Jameson.

 

Padma shakes his hand, Tom tells Johnny to pass his hello onto Reed and Sue, and finally—

 

"I'm so ready to go home," Peter groans, flopping into the passenger seat, and Johnny snorts as he starts the car.

 

"Introverts," he teases. "Why'd you decide to be on TV again?"

 

Peter lifts his hips, struggling to remove his phone from his pocket, and rolls his eyes. "Because I never think anything through before I do it?" He scrolls through his contacts as he hums off-key under his breath.

 

"Well, to be fair, if you thought things through then we probably never would've kissed." Johnny glances curiously at the phone in his hand, the glow of the screen dimly illuminating the cab of the car. "Aunt May?"

 

"MJ." Peter puts it on speaker, listening to it ring. "She, Gwen, and Aunt May are watching _Wheel of Fortune_ tonight, and she's the most likely to pick up. I just want to let them know we're on our way back to the hotel."

 

"Hey, tiger," MJ greets. Her voice is tinny through the phone, but Peter can hear the smile anyway. "You're on speaker."

 

"So are you," Peter chuckles. He can picture them, Gwen curled into MJ's side and Aunt May with her ancient bunny slippers propped up on the coffee table as she calls out ridiculous answers to the puzzles. "Just wanted to let you know it's all over; Johnny's driving us back to the hotel, and we are officially done with _Top Chef_."

 

"Did Johnny win fan favorite?" Gwen calls. "Because MJ and I spent an hour voting for him in incognito mode like seventy times, and that better not have been for nothing."

 

"I should've known that was you two," Johnny laughs. "Thank you, you filthy, filthy cheaters."

 

"Anything for you, baby," MJ croons.

 

"Hey, ex-wife, stop flirting with my boyfriend—"

 

" _Never_."

 

"—because I have a question for you."

 

"We voted for Johnny because you were a lost cause; by the time we got to the polls you were too far behind to have a chance to win."

 

Peter snorts. "No, I don't care about that. What I care about is—"

 

"Starving kids in Africa."

 

"No. I mean, well, yes. But I'm talking about—"

 

"Sue's calling," Aunt May interjects. "Should I tell her you're on the other line?"

 

"I felt my phone buzzing a minute ago; I think she's trying to get hold of me and Pete," Johnny says. "You can let her know we'll call them next."

 

"And now I'm the only one not on the phone," Gwen complains, as the distant sound of _Wheel of Fortune_ is paused so Aunt May can small talk with Sue.

 

"Nah, Johnny's driving," MJ points out.

 

"I should call Reed. No, I should call the kids! Franklin has a phone now, doesn't he?"

 

"Johnny says they'll call you next, but I can hold the phone next to Mary Jane's if you'd like, Sue."

 

"Franklin has a phone, Gwen, but he's not allowed to answer it unless he knows the number."

 

" _Rats_. Would Ben pick up if I called him, Johnny?"

 

"Was that Reed in the background? He isn't still working is he, that sounded like his thoughtful murmur."

 

Peter sighs, leaning his forehead against the phone, and Johnny's laughing at him from the other seat as the voices on the other end of the line become utterly unintelligible. "Thanksgiving's gonna be a mess, huh?" he muses. He means to sound grumpy, but he's pretty sure he just sounds fond. "Your family and my family and—will the Foundation kids be around?"

 

"Pete."

 

Johnny's voice is soft, and Peter looks up. "What?" he asks, as MJ and Gwen bicker over the remote on the other end of the line. Johnny's eyes are on the road, but there's a dopey tilt to his smile when Peter tilts the phone towards him, peering through the gloom. " _What_?" he asks again, and Johnny reaches over to grab his hand.

 

"Thanksgiving isn't for seven months," Johnny tells him, threading their fingers together. "You think we're still gonna be…"

 

"Oh." Peter looks down at their hands, a smile tugging at the corners of his own lips. "Well, yeah. Don't you?"

 

Johnny hums. "Assuming that in the intervening months you don't try to propose and instead accidentally trade the ring for seven chinchillas? Yeah. Yeah, I do."

 

**Author's Note:**

> Things that never quite made it into the final story:
> 
> -Padma and Jameson absolutely hate each other, and while they keep it together pretty well on camera, you can definitely tell  
> -Sam Wilson's nickname is, in fact, Captain America; that's what happens when you're the personal chef for POTUS  
> -Stilt-Man went home first
> 
> If you've never watched Top Chef and you're interested in getting into it, I'd recommend starting with Season Three if you want to go chronologically (One is very different in terms of the set-up of the competition, and Two is... well, just trust me. It's no good.) or Eight if you don't, because it's my favorite.
> 
> The art seems to be having issues right now, but that-one-mod's posted it over here! I highly recommend taking a look: http://that-one-mod.tumblr.com/post/153641612389/the-cameras-on-us-weekendconspiracytheorist


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